Could someone please tell me how to install this update manually without registering and installing the desktop software? I do not plan registering the Kobo Touch if I can help it. Any help is greatly appreciated. my current firmware version is 1.9.9 (r31493 8/19/11).
Thanks.

Could someone please tell me how to install this update manually without registering and installing the desktop software? I do not plan registering the Kobo Touch if I can help it. Any help is greatly appreciated. my current firmware version is 1.9.9 (r31493 8/19/11).
Thanks.

Download the zip file to your PC and extract the contents (preserving the directory structure) to your Kobo's .kobo directory. Switch off, switch on and the new version should get installed automatically.

Yes I'm having the same problem.
It might be possible that the state of whether the setup has been done or not is saved in the .kobo folder. So once you have set it up just make a copy of all its flash content, including the .kobo folder.
After a factory reset, all you will have to do is just restore all the content (delete the 2 pre-existing folders beginning with '.' first).
I have't tried it yet, but I will as soon as I get my hands on a Windows machine.

I just upgraded from 1.9.11 to 1.9.16, and was forced to create an account with the desktop app (yuck). I used the 2.1.6 desktop app under Wine.

First, though, I backed up my .kobo directory. Afterwards, I diff-ed the new and old .kobo directories.

According to another post (I haven't tested it, since I've pretty much dumped the Kobo reader.), it's actually the two records in the user table of the kobo.sql file. (file can be opened, examined and edited with SQLLite.). The contents of the records doesn't even matter, so long as they are there. Presumably, that means, you could just make up fake data for the two records. It would be intersting to know if proting a kobo.sql file between two devices would cause problems or not. Mayhaps someone could upload a bare bones .sql file that interested people could put on their device after a factory reset.

i had troubles installing the 2.4.0 update via wifi, so i'm going to do it this way. when i connected to my kobo, i noticed that there's a file called "kobo update 2.4.0.zip" in the .kobo folder from the failed wifi attempts...should i delete that file (is it safe)?

i had troubles installing the 2.4.0 update via wifi, so i'm going to do it this way. when i connected to my kobo, i noticed that there's a file called "kobo update 2.4.0.zip" in the .kobo folder from the failed wifi attempts...should i delete that file (is it safe)?

It should be safe to delete that file. The Kobo upgrade routine would unpack it during the upgrade process and delete it after that. What I am curious about is if you could get some information about the file before deleting it. File size, hash if you can generate that, copy the file to your computer and unpack it to see if the files inside are corrupted, any other information you can come up with. Mostly to see if the file is corrupted during the WiFi sync or if the Kobo upgrade is simply not seeing and unpacking the file.